The Color of Smoke - Paperback
by Menyhert Lakatos (Author), Ann Major (Translator)
The first major novel about Eastern Europe's Roma, or Travelers (Gypsies), by a Romani author, The Color of Smoke is both a work of passion chronicling one young man's rise to manhood and an epic work that conjures up a dark era of world history. It is an undiscovered classic that has been published in several languages since its 1975 appearance in Hungary--but never before in English.
Inspired by the author's own boyhood in World War II-era Hungary, it is a beautifully written coming-of-age story of a Romani boy torn between the community of his birth and the mainstream society that both entices him and rejects him.
"After appearing in various European languages, The Color of Smoke has at last been made available in English. Based loosely on Lakatos Menyhért's own life, it skillfully and imaginatively portrays the challenges facing the journey from boyhood to manhood of its central figure. As a Romani (Gypsy) adolescent he has to deal with the cultural barriers that separate his own world from the non-Gypsy world as all Roma must do--but he does so surrounded by the terrors of the Second World War, when the Romani people in Hungary were being herded into labor camps, some destined for Auschwitz. Written by an insider, this long-overdue and realistically harsh book opens a window into Romani life at that time and adds to our growing awareness of the Romani experience in Nazi-occupied Europe." ⎯Ian Hancock, Director of the Romani Archives and Documentation Center, University of Texas, and author of We Are the Romani People
"Hailed as the crowning achievement of the late Menyhért Lakatos, Hungary's foremost Romani (Gypsy) author of the twentieth century, The Color of Smoke has finally appeared in an English translation. Its vivid characters and background illustrate the pathos and resilience of the Roma in Hungary during World War II, when that country was first an ally and then a victim of Nazi Germany. The author has drawn upon his boyhood experiences in this bildungsroman to show how his people, the Roma, denied their basic human rights and forced to scrounge an existence on the margins of society, were part of this society, but never fully accepted by the greater majority nor given equality of status. Finally they became the innocent victims of hatred and genocide along with the Jews when they were engulfed by the Nazi Holocaust." ⎯Ronald Lee, LLD, Romani Canadian writer, linguist, and activist
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Menyhért Lakatos (1926-2007) was the prizewinning author of many books. His magnum opus, The Color of Smoke⎯inspired by his own youth in a Romani settlement, and first published in Hungarian in 1975⎯has been translated into more than half a dozen languages.
ABOUT THE TRANSLATOR
Ann Major (1928-) has brought several Hungarian books to English, including Paul Lendvai's The Hungarians: A Thousand Years of Victory in Defeat (Princeton University Press), and also translates from German. The author of a memoir, A Carpet of Jacaranda (Sydney Jewish Museum, 2013), she lives in Lane Cove, Australia.
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